Quick Zip Sports

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

In short, the national champion is almost always a 1, 2 or 3 seeded team, and finishes the season ranked in the top 10 in a major stats category. Last year, Duke continued this trend. This year doesn't offer too much insight as every top team worth considering has a top 10 finish. **EDIT: Forgot to highlight Villanova for FT%**

Late to the game this year, so just reference previous years' posts as the guide to decode the numbers. It's a pretty balanced field at the top in terms of many teams having a very strong Elite 8 profile.

Monday, March 23, 2015

After the dust settles on the first (second) and second (third) rounds, I always go back and see how my KenPom OE/DE and LRMC profiles held up, and see how teams are trending.If you followed my picks, you'll see that all of my Elite 8 teams are still alive! To read the "Change" numbers, if a team has a "Positive (+)" change, it means they improved their OE or DE, and vice versa.

Louisville will make me look like a genius or an idiot. My initial gut said Louisville was the play, but I changed it to have Northern Iowa in the Elite 8, only to change it back last second. I'm going to give the benefit of the tourney experience doubt that they get it together to make a run.

Virginia is out of contention in my opinion due to the unknown of the Anderson injury. See Joel Embiid of last year... (Yes I know I made Virginia an Elite 8 lock, but with no better news on Anderson, I can't justify it.)

I originally had Notre Dame and Iowa State in the Elite 8, but I couldn't justify both of their non-Pomeroy+LRMC friendly profiles. Also, I think those teams are getting a lot more visibility given they won their conference tourneys.

I won't be surprised if UNC knocks off the Badgers. The Tar Heels would be the first team they've faced that I think could put them in a hole by half-time and then keep the defensive pressure up on the three-point line to not let them back in it.

Only one expert picked Kansas in the Elite 8. Both Wichita and Kansas have a top Pomeroy + LRMC profile, but I'm leaning on the experts who favor the Shockers.

Just like last year when I noted that I thought the tourney would unfold like the one in 2011, I think this one will likely resemble the one of 2012 when Kentucky rolled through the field.

Last year was the first time I posted anything about deep sleepers. Of the seven teams I identified, three of them ended up as Sweet 16 teams, with two advancing to the Elite 8. Those teams were Baylor, Stanford and Dayton. Here's a link to last year's post.

Unfortunately there isn't an obvious answer to even a short list of teams, given that 11 qualify based on the metrics used to identify candidates.

Despite strong OEs, I'm going to cut Indiana and Davidson because their DE is just too atrocious to overlook, down to 9. I'm going to cut Buffalo, Boise St, Oklahoma St, and Purdue because of higher LRMC ranks, their OE rating being on the higher end and their DE rating being nothing special, down to 5.Iowa, Providence, NC State, Mississippi and Stephen F. Austin would be my best bets for Elite 8 deep sleepers. I think for sure at least 2 of these teams make the Sweet 16, and in my opinion it's most likely SFA and Iowa based on bracket path.It should be noted that with both Texas and BYU have a pretty strong profiles for 11 seeds, and could just as easily fall into the Deep Sleeper bucket. However, since they were each a top 30 in LRMC they were captured in that analysis. You check out my other posts about the 2015 Bracket here:

What I do is aggregate the picks of the top college basketball minds of ESPN, SI, Yahoo! and CBS. This is often very useful when trying to make some of the coin flip decisions of 8/9, 7/10 and 5/12 match-ups.Highlights:

The long and short of it, I combine Ken Pomeroy's and Joel Sokol's advanced stats to find teams with the right profile of an Elite 8 team.There is a certain profile that Elite 8 teams have when looking at their composition of Ken Pomeroy's offensive and defensive efficiency (OE & DE), as well as the LRMC model. In the last three years I've posted on the blog, this model has helped me pick 15 of the 24 Elite 8 teams, and I was 9 for 11 on the teams I identified as my most confident picks. Here is what an ideal candidate profile looks like:

LRMC ranking of 30 or less

OE and DE rankings of 40 or less

Each of the teams who fit that profile are highlighted in green. As an update to the ranking this year, I have added teams from year's past that had a similar to the teams this year:* Edit: Please note Michigan State should be a yellow highlight because their DE is above 40, but below 60 *

Applying the info above to a bracket, here's my first take on the Elite 8 picks based on the profiles (Please note that my final bracket may have alternate picks due to further analysis):Midwest:Kentucky (1) & Notre Dame (3)South:Duke (1) & Iowa St (3) I couldn't give it to the Zags because Iowa and Davidson both have Deep Sleeper profilesWest:Wisconsin (1) & Baylor (3) The Baylor pick is purely based on the historical success of the profileEast: Louisville (4) & Virginia (2) On paper Nova looks like the safe pick, but I believe their profile is inflated due to their scheduleI know, I know, three 1 seeds in my mix of most confident picks...